Strangers in the World

The post did not all come from one man. Nearly every letter had been Paul’s, or written by somebody who worked beside him. This one is not. It is from the fisherman. The one who left his nets on the sand; who walked on the water and then looked at the waves and went down; who warmed his hands at a fire of coals in the high priest’s courtyard and said three times that he had never met Jesus, and heard a rooster crow, and went out and cried; who ate breakfast on the beach afterward and was asked three times whether he loved him. He is an old man now, far from that lake, in a big city, writing to people he has never met.

They were scattered across the top of the world he knew — Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia — provinces beyond the mountains, full of towns where a handful of people had come to trust Jesus. It had made their lives hard. The people next door talked about them. Men they had grown up with called them troublemakers. Some were slaves in houses where nobody believed what they believed. They were being given a hard time for what they now were. Peter wrote to tell them how to live in a place like that.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he has given us life all over again, into a hope that is alive, because Jesus Christ came back out of the dead. There is something kept for you in the heavens that cannot rot or be spoiled or fade.” “You are glad about that, though for a little while all sorts of tests have made you sad. Gold goes into the fire to prove it is real, and gold perishes. What you trust with is worth more than gold, and it is tested the same way.” “You never saw him, and you love him. You cannot see him now, and you trust him, and you are glad with a joy too big to say.”

Peter had seen him. He makes nothing of that. He puts it the other way round. “The prophets who spoke about the favor meant for you hunted for it and searched it out. They wanted to know which person, and which time, the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing at when it said beforehand that Christ would suffer, and what glory would come after that. They were told they were not serving themselves in it. They were serving you. These are things the messengers stoop down to look into.”

“So get your minds ready for work. Keep your heads clear. Put all the hope you have on the favor that is being brought to you when Jesus Christ is shown. Do not be pushed back into the shape you were in before you knew any better. The one who called you is holy: be holy yourselves, all the way through how you live. It is written: You are to be holy, because I am holy. It was not with silver or gold that you were bought out of the empty life your fathers handed down.” “Love each other deeply, from the heart. All flesh is like grass, and everything splendid about it like a flower in the grass. The grass dries up, the flower drops off, and the word of the Lord stays forever.” That word, he says, is the good news somebody carried up those roads to them.

“And if you call on a Father who judges every man by what he does, and plays no favorites, then live in reverence for the whole time you are staying here as foreigners.”

“Get rid of all malice, and lying, and pretending, and envy, and every kind of backbiting. Be like newborn babies going after milk — the honest milk with nothing false mixed in — so that you grow. You have tasted that the Lord is kind.” “Come to him: a living stone — thrown away by people, but chosen by God, and precious. You are living stones too, being built into a house, a holy priesthood, to bring God offerings of the spirit that he is glad to take, through Jesus Christ. The stone the builders threw out has turned into the cornerstone.” “You are a chosen people, priests for a king, a holy nation, a people God keeps for himself, to tell out the praises of the one who called you out of the dark into his amazing light. Once you were not a people; now you are God’s people; once nobody had shown you mercy, and now mercy has been shown you.” “For you who trust him, he is precious. For the ones who will not, he is the stone the builders threw out — a stone to stumble over, a rock to trip on. They trip because they will not obey the word.”

Then what to do about the people next door. “You are foreigners here, only passing through. Keep away from the wants that make war on your own soul. Live good lives among the people around you, so that the very thing they call you evildoers for is the thing that makes them praise God when they have watched it long enough.” “Submit to every human authority for the Lord’s sake — the king, and the governors he sends. This is what God wants: that by doing good you shut the mouths of foolish men who know nothing. You are free; do not use being free as a blanket to hide badness under. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.”

Some of the people this letter was read out to were house slaves. He speaks to them next. “Servants in a household: do what your masters tell you, with all respect — not only the good and fair ones, but the harsh ones too. There is nothing to your credit in taking a beating you have earned. But if you do good and suffer for it, and bear it because of God, that is favor with God.” “Christ suffered for you and left you a copy to trace, so you could put your feet in his footprints. Insulted, he did not insult back; suffering, he did not threaten. He carried our sins up in his own body onto the tree. By his bruise you were healed. You were wandering off like sheep; you have turned back now to the shepherd who watches over your souls.”

He has a word for wives, and a word for husbands. “Wives, do what your own husbands say. If a husband will not listen to the word, he may be won without a word being said, just by watching how his wife lives. Do not let what you put on be the outside thing — hair plaited up, gold put round you, fine clothes — but the hidden person of the heart, in what does not wear out: a gentle and quiet spirit, which God thinks costly. That is how the holy women who hoped in God made themselves lovely. Sarah did what Abraham said and called him lord, and you are her children when you do good and are not frightened by any terror.” “Husbands, in the same way, live with them with understanding. Show her honor, as the weaker vessel, and as one who inherits the favor of life just as much as you do — so that nothing gets in the way of your prayers.”

“All of you: be of one mind. Feel what the next person feels. Love like brothers. Be tenderhearted. Think small of yourselves. Do not repay evil with evil, or insult with insult. Do the opposite — bless. That is what you were called to, and there is a blessing in it for you.” “Whoever wants to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue off evil and his lips off lies, and turn away from wrong and do good, and look for peace, and chase it.”

“Who will hurt you if you are keen on doing good? And even if you do suffer for doing right, you are blessed. Do not be frightened of what frightens them. Keep the Lord Christ holy in your hearts, and always be ready to say why you hope, to anybody who asks you — but gently, and with respect, and with a clear conscience, so that the people running down the good way you live end up ashamed. It is better to suffer for doing good, if that is what God wants, than for doing wrong.”

Then something strange. Christ suffered once over sins, Peter says — a right man for wrong ones, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit; and in that spirit he went and made an announcement to the spirits in prison. They were the ones who would not listen long ago, while God waited and Noah built the ark, and eight people came through the water alive. That water, Peter says, matches what happens now when a person goes down into the water. It is not dirt being washed off a body. It is a clear conscience promising itself to God. And Jesus Christ is at God’s right hand now, gone into heaven, with messengers and authorities and powers put under him.

“Christ suffered in the flesh, so arm yourselves with the same intention — because the man who has suffered in the flesh is done with sin — and live what is left of your time here by what God wants, and not by what people want.” “You gave the nations enough of your time already: the indecency, the wanting, the drinking bouts and the parties and the lawless worship of idols. Now they think it strange that you will not run with them into the same flood any more, and they say ugly things about it. They will give their account to the one who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”

“Beloved, do not be knocked sideways by the burning going on among you, as though something strange were happening. It is a test. You are sharing what Christ suffered, so be glad of it. If they abuse you for his name, you are blessed. Only let none of you suffer for being a murderer or a thief or a troublemaker or a man who pokes about in other people’s business; but if it is for being a Christian, do not be ashamed of it — let him honor God by that name.” “The end of everything has come close. So keep your head, and be sober enough to pray. Above all, keep loving each other hard, because love covers a great heap of sins. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. Whatever gift each of you was given, use it to serve the others, like good servants running somebody else’s house. If a man speaks, let it be as the words of God; if a man serves, let it be out of the strength God supplies.”

“It is time for the judgment to start at the house of God. And if it starts with us, what will the end be for the people who will not obey the good news? If the right man is saved only with difficulty, where will the ungodly man turn up? So let the people who suffer because God wills it hand their souls over to a faithful Maker, and go on doing good.”

Near the end he turns to the men who look after the gatherings. “I am an elder like you, and I saw what Christ suffered. Shepherd the flock of God that is with you. Watch over it because you want to, not because somebody is making you; not for dirty money, but because you are keen; and not lording it over the people handed to you — be the pattern they copy. When the chief shepherd is shown, you will get a crown that does not fade.” “Younger ones, be under your elders. And all of you, tie humility on like an apron and wear it toward each other, because God stands against the proud and gives favor to the humble.”

“Get down low under God’s strong hand, and he will lift you up when the time comes. Throw all your worry onto him, because you matter to him.” “Keep your head. Stay alert. The one who accuses you walks about like a lion roaring, looking for somebody to swallow. Stand up to him and stand firm, and remember your brothers everywhere are going through the same things.” “And the God of all favor, who called you into his everlasting glory, will himself put you back together when you have suffered a little, and make you firm, and give you strength, and set you on a foundation.” Silvanus wrote it down for him. This is the true favor of God, he says at the end — stand in it. Then greetings from the gathering in the place he calls Babylon, and from Mark, whom he calls his son, and a word to greet one another with a kiss of love.